That is all. I need to decompress for about a week now.

So I had a phone call yesterday afternoon, from the psychologist who’s assessing me today. She sounded very nice, but she told me I would definitely get my yes or no to autism today at the end of the session. When my daughter was assessed (privately) they sent her away with a huge questionnaire and…

I thought I’d show you my model railway, because autism, right? So it’s what known as a shunting puzzle. It’s really short and compact with those three sidings and you can play an interesting game (well I think so) trying to rearrange wagons in as few a moves as possible – it is precisely the…

As usual this post comes with a trigger warning for talk of suicidal ideation and self-harm. I finally got my autism assessment letter. It’s scheduled for next month. My parents have booked it into their diary so they can come too and can talk about how I was a totally normal child who walked before…

Have we talked about perseveration? I feel like we haven’t talked about it enough. So perseveration is the fixation autistics feel. That’s really good when you’re trying to write up your master’s project. It’s less helpful when you’re stuck on a bad emotion and can’t let it go. It’s the whole Class 58 brain thing.…

This post comes with a trigger warning for discussion of self-harm and suicidal ideation. In case you hadn’t noticed I am incredibly good at catastrophising – most autistic people are. I think it’s connected to my cognitive rigidity, whereby while your average neurotypical (NT) brain is an off-road car, my brain is a freight train.…

Today is now a write-off. After my weekly shift at the library this morning I was going to use this afternoon to plan next week’s tutorial and a talk on supporting autistic university students I’m hoping to do next year. Instead I got an email from a client. Sometimes books refuse to die. Sometimes authors…

***We interrupt our regular programming to bring you the following public service announcement.*** I’ve seen a lot of tweets recently from autistic people worrying about where they are going to go if everyone deserts Twitter. And I thought I should probably let you know, dear reader, where I hang out. Since if I feel like…

My daughter has autism. It’s basically an open and shut case. They knew she was at the end of the screening assessment. Everything else was just confirmation. I may have had a good cry when they sent me the full diagnosis yesterday. I’m so relieved. I was worried that they’d say something along the lines…

So I’ve spotted that two people have unconnected from me on social media in the past week. What does that mean? For record, I’m not talking about randos on twitter I’ve never met. But people I’ve worked with, eaten lunch with even. It’s happened before. Someone I considered a good friend appeared as a “person…